Ireland no longer seems to generate the level of special attention from the world's superpower that it once did, writes Stephen Collins
THE TAOISEACH'S warmly received address to the US Congress was clearly an important milestone for him on the cusp of his departure from office. More importantly, the content of his speech illustrated just how much Ireland has been transformed over the past few decades.
The contrast between Mr Ahern's speech and that of the last Fianna Fáil politician to address Congress, Eamon de Valera, is striking. De Valera, the only politician since independence who won more elections than Ahern, was invited to address the joint Houses of Congress in May, 1964, while he was president of Ireland.
The Irish Times reported de Valera's speech under the banner headline: "President's plea for Irish unity." In his speech, made without notes, de Valera expressed the hope that one day another representative from Ireland would be able to stand in the US Congress and announce that "our severed country has been reunited and the last source of enmity between the British people and the Irish people has been removed and at last we can be truly friends".
When his successor stood in Congress on Wednesday, almost 44 years later, his message was not the one de Valera had dreamed of. Ahern's message to America was actually far more powerful.
"Our prayer has been answered. Our faith has been rewarded. After so many decades of conflict, I am so proud, Madam speaker, to be the first Irish leader to inform the United States Congress: Ireland is at peace."
Ahern's political legacy is that not only did he work tirelessly to bring the peace process to a conclusion over the past 10 years, but that, under his leadership, peace unequivocally replaced de Valera's vision of Irish unity as the goal of Fianna Fáil policy.
Of course, the party is still committed to unity as the ideal ultimate outcome but, in practical terms, peace and an agreed Ireland have replaced it as attainable goals.
The abandonment of the territorial claim to the North in Articles Two and Three of the Constitution was the culmination of a shift in Irish Government policy that had been under way for a long time. Ahern, though, managed to pull it off with hardly a murmur of dissent from his own party. It was a remarkable achievement, considering that many in Fianna Fáil appeared to be attached to the two articles as if they were holy writ.
Ahern's achievement as a politician was to build on the process begun by Albert Reynolds in the Downing Street Declaration of 1994, and to reformulate his own party's aspirations. The achievable goal of a settlement based on equal respect for the two political traditions on the island of Ireland replaced the unattainable goal of Irish unity, and nobody in Fianna Fáil complained.
A little over a decade after Charles Haughey had rejected the report of the New Ireland Forum, because it dared to put forward options other than a unitary state encompassing the 32 counties of Ireland, Ahern adopted a policy based on consent in both parts of the island as the fundamental principles of a settlement.
The successful conclusion of that policy, beginning with the Belfast Agreement and the intricate negotiations that eventually led to the establishment of workable powersharing arrangements, is undoubtedly Ahern's outstanding achievement. One of the key factors in the success of the Northern talks was that Ahern and British prime minister Tony Blair worked hand in glove. They established the good relations between the Irish and British people in a way that fulfilled at least one of de Valera's ambitions, even if not in the manner he had envisaged.
The success of the peace process was the reason Ahern was invited to address Congress but, paradoxically, his achievement contributed to a certain lack of interest by his hosts. The bad manners shown by the majority of senators and congressmen who didn't bother to attend the joint meeting was quite striking. Of course, all the leading Irish American politicians, who have taken a keen interest in the peace process, came to hear the Taoiseach and to applaud his achievements.
However, the poor turnout was a salutary reminder that for many American politicians, Ireland doesn't matter all that much. It seems that once the whiff of cordite is no longer in the air, we don't really figure in their calculations.
Maybe that is the way it should be. For the past two decades Ireland has received special attention at the highest levels in the US. President Ronald Reagan took a much more active role than was widely appreciated at the time in getting Margaret Thatcher to take Garret FitzGerald seriously and come to the Anglo-Irish Agreement of 1985.
President Bill Clinton's direct involvement in the peace process is well known and appreciated in Ireland. And to be fair, President George Bush has proved much more supportive than anybody anticipated. His envoy Mitchell Reiss played a crucial role in the final stages of the talks that led to the agreement between Sinn Féin and the DUP.
The fact that Ireland no longer seems to generate that level of special attention from the world's superpower is a positive development. It means that we are now a normal, stable democracy, not very different from other well off European states, and we no longer need American patronage to deal with our own problems.